


Verity and the Home Team

by Norickayer



Series: The Saga of Loki: Hero of Earth-616 [3]
Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Young Avengers
Genre: Gen, one-sided Teddy/David, vague allusions to polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:23:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2430377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norickayer/pseuds/Norickayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Verity isn’t sure whether she’s more concerned about Loki’s health or the possibility that she won’t get that favor Loki owes her now. Either way, showing up unannounced and dripping wet is going to hurt her case.</p><p>Fuck it. </p><p>(In which Verity shows up on Loki’s doorstep, David is totally not over his crush on Teddy, and we finally find out what the Young Avengers have been up to while Loki and America are busy on their inter-dimensional quest. The two parts of Loki’s life had to meet sometime.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Verity and the Home Team

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place concurrently with the second chapter of _Lokka Tattur_ and all of _Loki and the Dwarves._

The midday sun is hidden behind a thick layer of rainclouds, painting the street with a wash of gray. Rain falls in sheets, soaking through Verity’s coat in seconds. She hops from overhang to overhang, trying to avoid getting even more wet. The apartment building door opens, revealing a young couple huddled together under an umbrella. Verity dashes forward, passing through the door before it swings shut.

Her hair is plastered to her face, and her thick jacket, heavily insulated against the cold this morning, is heavy with water. She stands shivering in the lobby, a puddle developing at her feet. Her glasses have fogged up.

This isn’t how she wanted her meeting with Loki to go. She hadn’t heard from zir since Verity helped zir break into Asgardia. That was several weeks ago. Verity isn’t sure whether she’s more concerned about Loki’s health or the possibility that she won’t get that favor Loki owes her now. Either way, showing up unannounced and dripping wet is going to hurt her case.

Fuck it. It’s not like she’s going back out there in the rain, and she’s certainly not going to loiter around in the lobby, waiting for someone to find her. Verity does her best to wring the water out of her jacket, shakes out her hair, and catches the next elevator to the fourth floor.

-

In Loki’s absence, Teddy, Billy, and David have taken over zir apartment. David’s Macbook lies abandoned on the kitchen table, surrounded by spiral-bound notebooks, computer printouts, and _Gods and Myths of Northern Europe_. Teddy has actually moved into the guest bedroom in order to keep an eye on things when Billy goes home to the Kaplans and David to the apartment he shares with Tommy. The evidence of constant occupation litters every flat surface: phone chargers left unattended in the living room, an extra set of toiletries in the bathroom, a pair of sneakers pushed out of the way against a wall.

“Allpossibleworlds, allpossibleworlds, allpossibleworlds,” Billy chants. He’s hovering at waist-height above the floor of the kitchen, the only room in the place with tile floors. They don’t want to risk putting candles on the carpet; Loki would freak if ze came back to scorch marks or spilled wax all over. Billy’s eyes are lit with blue energy, the light casting an alien shadow on his face as he shuffles through the images before him.

“Are you sure you don’t need a break?” Teddy asks. “If you don’t help me eat these brownies I swear they’re going to be gone by the time David wakes up.” He waves a fork at Billy in emphasis, and continues to demolish the sweets still in the baking pan.

“I just need to find it,” Billy answers, distracted.

Teddy raises an eyebrow at that. “We’ve already mapped out the next two quests. What do you need to find right now?”

“You’ll see,” is the only answer Teddy receives.

The doorbell rings through the apartment. Teddy jumps, and almost drops the glass baking pan on the floor. There’s a loud _thump_ from the living room that suggests that David is now awake. Billy doesn’t so much as blink.

Teddy leaves his fiancé to his scrying, and goes to answer the door. David is already there, smoothing down his wrinkled shirt and gazing through the peep-hole.

“Are you ok?” Teddy asks.

David glances back at him, blushing slightly. “Yeah, fine. You could’ve woken me up.”

“You were nodding off at the CrowCam controls. We figured that you’d better take a nap before you flew it right off a cliff,” Teddy claps a hand on David’s shoulder. David smiles back, blush in full form.

“Remind me why I thought it was a good idea to room with Tommy?”

The doorbell rings again, interrupting the moment.

Teddy reaches out and unlatches it, under the philosophy that whatever wanted to get in couldn’t possibly be scarier that what was already inside. Few things in the universe could go toe-to-toe with a Kree/Skrull hybrid, an adolescent reality-warper, and a guy who can put up with Tommy Shepherd on a regular basis.

The girl at the door looks like a drowned raccoon. Her eyeliner was probably once impeccably done, but now runs messily down her cheeks. The annoyed, indignant look in her eyes fades into surprise as she registers who opened the door. Then, pink spreads across her face.

“Oh. Uh, sorry- my friend used to live- I guess she moved or- you know what, nevermind. Wrong apartment.” She flips her rain-soaked jacket onto her back with a wet _slap_ and steps backward, away from the door.

Something about her looks oddly familiar. Teddy squints at her, trying to figure out where he’s seen her before.

“Hey!” he realizes, “You were that girl from the speed dating!” The girl freezes. It really is her- her face isn’t particularly recognizable under that makeup, but her sleeve tattoos are the same ones Teddy saw on a fuzzy cell-phone photograph. “Wait, you didn’t _really_ hook up with Loki, did you?”

“Ok…” the girl says, as much to herself as anyone else, “right apartment after all.”

“Do you want to come in?” David asks. “I mean, Loki isn’t here, but you can at least dry off.”

Teddy’s manners reassert themselves, and he opens the door wider to welcome their visitor inside.

“I’m Teddy,” he says, offering his hand.

“David.”

“Verity,” the girl says. “And no, I didn’t sleep with Loki.” She takes his hand and comes inside.

“Good, there’s enough of that going around,” David says.

-

Verity comes out of the bathroom looking much more comfortable. There’s not a hair dryer in the apartment, but she’s done the best she can with a towel, and Teddy managed to find a knit dress of Loki’s that would fit her.

“I can make hot cocoa or coffee if you want,” he offers when she joins them in the living room, but she shakes her head. To her credit, she doesn’t even question the diffuse blue glow emanating from the kitchen.

“So are you guys Loki’s roommates, or what? You weren’t home last time I was here.”

Teddy and David trade looks.

“Uh…”

“We’re house-sitting,” David replies. “Loki’s out of town for a while.” Verity tips her head, as if listening for a far-away sound. Whatever she hears satisfies her, and she nods to herself.

“Ok. Any idea when she’ll be back?”

David and Teddy trade glances, each trying to figure out how much to reveal.

“She has at least two more stops on her trip,” Teddy begins, figuring out how to translate from super-hero to normal-person. “But it might go longer, depending on how these go.” Verity nods in understanding.

“Ok. She wasn’t expecting me or anything- sorry for barging in like that. I- wait, what the hell is that?”

‘That’ is Teddy’s laptop, left open on the coffee table. The CrowCam feed is open, the window showing a real-time video of everything seen by the hybrid camera/magical construct. On screen, two adult men are dragging a slighter figure down a brightly-lit hallway. Teddy would say that the smaller figure is Loki- it looks like Loki- but with her, you never know. She could very well be impersonating Thor, and dragging her own doppelgänger off to some uncertain fate.

One of them really should have been paying attention.

“It’s an amateur movie we made a couple months back,” David improvises. Verity stares at him.

“Pull the other one,” she says.

“No, it’s true- that’s Loki’s brother playing the big guy, see?” Teddy agrees, pointing to the large blonde man who is _probably_ Thor. Well, _a_ Thor, at least.

Verity studies Teddy’s face for a moment, before declaring, “Ok, that part’s true. But it’s not a home video. What’s going on?”

“It’s ok- we’re with the X-Men,” David tells her.

“Bullshit.” Verity stands up, leaving the two boys sitting on the couch. “Who are you people? What did you do with Loki?”

“I- we-“ Teddy stutters.

“You can tell when people are lying,” David observes, “Verity. Did you pick that name yourself?”

“Yes, and no. You really are house-sitting, Loki really is out of town, and that big guy really is her brother- but everything else is bullcrap. Is Loki in trouble?”

“No more than usual,” Teddy reassures her. It’s probably true. No one’s been paying attention to the feed for the last ten minutes, but now Loki’s just sitting in a cell talking to Thor, so she’s probably fine. “Look, you obviously care about her- there are few of us who do. I’m her boyfriend. David and I are kind of guiding her on a quest. It’s complicated. And, uh, this,” Teddy gestures to the video feed, “is probably part of her master plan.”

“Your turn,” David says, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Verity Willis. I’m a- friend- of Loki’s. I helped her out awhile back when she had a job that required someone with my skillset.”

“Uh, no offense, but Loki has Gram, the sword of truth. Why did she need your help?”

“I can see through illusions, apparently.” Verity kind of wonders about that. She wonders how many hidden things she’s seen in her life that she hadn’t noticed at the time. Until Loki clued her in that where she saw a slim figure in green metal everyone else saw a middle-aged man, Verity had no idea that her ability to see through lies was so literal.

“Oh. That’s cool. I’m a shape-shifter. David’s a human encyclopedia,” Teddy says, causal and friendly as if they are comparing favorite colors.

“I’m not-“ David begins, then reconsiders how much he cares to have this conversation. “Whatever. That’s basically true.”

“Cool. Well, Loki’s not here, and we’re not really sure when to expect her back. Do you want us to have her give you a call?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Verity says in relief. That should give her some time to figure out what she even wants from Loki. Seeing that Loki has other social bonds with people who aren’t career criminals makes her feel a bit better about the whole situation, as well.

“I’m ready for America,” Loki’s voice says over the tinny speakers of Teddy’s laptop. The volume is usually turned way down, so that whatever the CrowCams hear doesn’t distract them from daily life, but Loki has it set so that speaking directly to the camera overrides that, making her call for help clearly audible.

Teddy and David spring into action. Teddy takes the controls of the CrowCam1, pulling the headset on over messy blond hair and adjusting the microphone.

“David’s on it. Holding up ok there?” Teddy asks. Loki responds by giving the camera a jaunty smile. _All according to plan_.

David retrieves his own laptop from the kitchen, quickly reviving it from sleep mode and pulling on his own mic. The visual feed of CrowCam2 shows an aerial view of an open field, with two figures standing together- America and an unfamiliar girl. David taps a few keys, and the video zooms in- presumably following the crow’s dive. Soon, America’s face fills the screen.

“America, Loki needs to be picked up,” David reports.

“Great,” she answers sarcastically. She opens a portal then and there, giving the camera a great view as she kicks straight through to another dimension in the Multiverse.

“That’s great footage,” Teddy notes, “We’re definitely going to have to put that in the final cut.”

As Loki is reunited with America on screen, the boys relax and set the computers aside.

“Sorry about that,” Teddy says to Verity. She looks between the boys and shakes her head.

“That was- I don’t know what that was, but it was awesome. Does that happen often? Can I watch?” Verity is awash in possibilities. Action, excitement, adventure- all from the safety of Loki’s living room, and all impossibly, gloriously _true_.

David looks toward the kitchen, then locks eyes with Teddy.

“Uh, sure.”

“Why not?”

**Author's Note:**

> Verity Willis is a character from Loki: Agent of Asgard. They met while speed-dating. Verity later used her powers of truth-seeing to guide Loki and Lorelai through a room full of monsters and illusions. 
> 
> David is observant, and picks up on what Verity is doing, forms a hypothesis about what it means, and tests it by telling a boldfaced lie.


End file.
